The one truly willing vessel
by OrianeAngelPants
Summary: Nicks story was never truly told, we never fully got to understand what made him say yes so quickly, why we never hear from him ever again. This is the story of the events that happened on the night Nicks family was murdered. Rated T for graphic violent scenes.


Untaken vessels are no longer rarities among this earth. Once their numbers were few, there was a single vessel available per angel in a human's short unassuming life time. This was of course until man began to breed, like rabbits they went and fulfilled god's wishes to go forth and multiply; suddenly the blood lines were not limited to a single child, spreading like tress, reaching out their branches to touch multiple men and women, all with the ability to withhold the pure power that is an angel. They live their lives blissfully unaware of their role in the cosmos until their time is called short, their bodies demanded and put to use for a higher purpose.  
Some vessels signed up straight away, the religious nut jobs, who thought that maybe, just maybe, God had chosen them personally, because they were a good man or because it couldn't be anyone but them; that they would convert the faithless and split the seas with a flick of a hand, cure cancer in a day and smite evil over a night. Others signed up for their personal battleground because, like the soldiers that so willingly threw themselves forth before them, they were misinformed; minds filled with images of glory, peace on earth, a little slice of Eden itself. They honestly believed it would be a pleasant experience, that it would be the right thing to do. When reality finally and abruptly hits them, when their extremities are contorted into fists of iron and steel, their mouths prised open to release words that man never thought an angel would mutter, they get scared. They scream and shout until their non-existent throats are raw and bleeding, pushing at their internal prison walls frantically, desperate to escape this horrendous form of unending torture. But it's too late, their attempts are in vain, once the binding contract is made, it cannot be broken; their bodies belong to the angles for the rest of eternity.  
No matter what reason the vessel could conceive to mutter the word "yes", eventually, they all come to regret the decision. Watching those around them age and die is the one of the first painful acts - times change, cities fall and all the while the vessel stands motionless, forced to be a silent observer to the destruction of the world around him .Some go insane, others retreat to the furthest corner in their minds they can possibly crawl into, and shut everything out; not wanting to see out of their own piercing eyes, not wanting to know what is happening to millions of people , both innocent an guilty, because of them. Every single vessel, every man who has ever let the angelic grace reach out and taint their human soul has come to despise their choice.

All but one.

Nick, whose last name was never considered to be of import, was the only exception to this rule. He was a man who was possessed at the age of 34 and who had lost everything in a single rise and fall of the moon. Nick once had a beautiful wife called Sarah, who he had wed all but 3 years ago. His wife had given birth to Grace 2 years 8 months and 12 days after that. Grace was pretty much an average child, she had cool skin and pale blue eyes, she liked the mushed up carrot her dad made for her more than the processed baby muck her mother bought by the jar and her mind was far too young to understand the world around her. Yet despite all this, Nick treated Grace as if she was the most important being on the planet. His life was a constant routine, get up early in the morning to feed and change the baby, rush out the door with a chaste kiss pressed to Sarah's lips before he was laid beneath one of the dozen cars he would see to in a day; tighten the bolts, change the oil, replace rusted parts, his job was simple and mechanic; as soon as he could Nick would flee the job at the small garage and done his jeans and a tee-shirt, rushing home to envelop his wife in his arms, answer the questions about his day and play with his child. Soon he'd have to prepare dinner for them all, Sarah had tried to cook once and nearly burnt the curtains off in the process, they'd decided to leave it to Nick to prepare the food from now on while the wife would wash up the plates they'd dirtied after dinner. As quickly as his morning had begun, his evening ends, the pair two exhausted to do anything other than nuzzle against each other's necks after putting the child to bed together, attempt to gain a few hours sleep before being woken by the crackle of the baby monitor. Day completed it would be put on repeat for every sun lit hour after that, little variation needed or allowed to bring in what was needed for the family; even though Nick once hated repetition he was happy to oblige to it now, he had a loving wife, an angelic child, a secure job and a blossoming future to look forward to.

The warm rays of the summer sun had started to give way to dulling clouds when Grace started to keep her parents up throughout the whole night. Her insistent and demanding screeching penetrating through the thin walls of the house and refusing to be quieted; even with her parents wisely constructed rota of "whose turn it is to attempt to make her be quiet", neither of them were able to block out the noise long enough to get a full night's sleep. This deprivation of course led to a near fatal error when Nick was working on the underside of a car, resulting in the old and red ford fiesta trapping him underneath the oil soaked chassis and the coldness of the concrete floor. It took the local fire crew three hours to finally lift the car from Nick without it slipping back down onto him before he could make his escape and after a few rounds with the local doctor, he was prescribed a small bottle of pills which came with a promise of a good night's sleep, "uninterrupted and blissfully empty". Nick lay back in the bed he shared with Sarah that night, holding his wife tightly in his arms mumbling how much he loved her and their life as a family together, she turns over to kiss him gently on the head as his eyelids droop lazily and whispers sweet good night wishes to him; it is at this point Nick thinks he could die contented. The irony of his thoughts was lost to him later on.

It was 3am on that same night and there has been a break out in the local prison; a man in his forties, due to be transported to a secure psychiatric facility, has crawled under the wire fencing, his lithe body skinny enough to do so without causing or raising alarm. His name is Alan, though he himself is unaware of this. He walks through the streets of the small town of Pike Creek in Delaware, in an enjoyable psychopathic frenzy, kicking his heels to the side and raising his arms out to the biting air, letting out whoops and cries praising the night for being so open and free. Letting himself into a small house on his way, where the occupants are not present for one reason or another, he takes his time going through their choice of knives, fingers running over the sharpened steel with hushed whispers and mutters. The couple that live in the house, keen cooks, have a dazzling array of pointed instruments, which Alan could picture a thousand ways to kill a man with. Eventually after much deliberation, he picks up a large steak knife, its hilt as solid and as dark as the eyes of a demonically possessed man, and inserts the blades handle into the curve of his hand. It fits perfectly. He smiles.

Soon he is on the move again, the night still cold and dark without the warming touches and tendrils of the sun, and Alan seeks comfort in a house that is not his own. Cries and muted pleas of "hush baby hush now daddy's sleeping" pierce through the veil of the night. Startled Alan almost drops the blade, the sound of the child screaming like poison to his ears, he groans and turns quickly and efficiently, with the precision of a military trained man, and walks past the iron wrought gates and up the path towards the ramshackle house. The lock easy enough to pick is quickly opened, no one bothering with any complicated systems in this neighbourhood, the population deeming them unnecessary as the area was as family friendly as Nick could afford. All Alan wanted to do was to get the child to stop screaming, but when the man walked up the stairs, his feet leaving molecules of dirt deeply embedded in the thread bare carpet, the mother believed he had other ideas.

All she saw was a filthy man, eyes wide and thin lips stretched back over decaying teeth, wielding a knife towards her and her baby. The cries could be heard across the town. Sarah's backing up against the cot, screaming for the man to have mercy, that she'd just started a family, that no one deserves to die, she's reduced to begging after a few mere moments; outwardly pleading with the man to kill her, spare the child, inwardly praying to God, to the angles, to her husband, she prays for help, saviour, sympathy. The help never comes - the only merciful act that evening was that her death was quick, a smooth slice across her stomach, a hand clenched over her mouth, two pairs of eyes wide, one in fear, one in sick pleasure, and as quickly as it started, her life was finished. The babies stopped crying now, its own beady and glassy eyes staring at her mother's lifeless body, writhing around in the cot she reaches out for someone to comfort her, but like the help, the comfort never arrives.  
Alan doesn't kill her straight away; he has other ideas to attend to first. Once being a man in the military he was trained to notice the small things that gave a situation away; such as the fact Alan noticed a pair of dirty trainers by the door on the way in, how both sides of the couch were worn and sagging with use, the baby's room having two very distinct different decorating styles in it, one soft and methodical, the other more clumsily put together, with love none the less. It was all these key little signs that alerted Alan to the fact the woman and her child were not alone that night, he knew nearly everything about him already, how he looked from the photos seemingly adorning the walls, where he worked from the key ring in the bowl by the kitchen table and most importantly why he never came through to the nursery that night. This final fact was only revealed to him once he had slain Sarah - upon further inspection of the house, he finds several well wishing cards and underneath them all, the prescription note for his sedatives. Alan knows the drug labelled on the flimsy paper is a sedative, he knows it is strong and will have knocked the sleeping man out for entirety of the night, prison was awash with drugs for him and due to his little condition, Alan could get a hold of these drugs and became an expert in them as such.

Grinning to himself, he mounts the stairs a last time, slinging the woman's blood soaked body over his shoulder; he quickly strides to the only other room on the upper level of the house. Creaking open the wooden door Alan slips in silently, his footsteps muffled by the sound of the child becoming restless again. The grin is starting to slide of his face. Red and black cloud his mind as Grace becomes very aware that she's suddenly very alone in the world, Alan doesn't like this noise, he wants it to stop. His need to silence the babe is still overridden though by his sick twisted desire to hurt the man when he wakes. Why should this guy be given all of this: a wife, a family, a home, a job, happiness secured for the foreseeable future? No, he'll change that for him.  
Peeling back the covers from one side of the bed Alan unceremoniously dumps the body on the mattress. Her now dirty hair sprawling around her head like a crown, her blood slowly soaking into the sheets surrounding her; in his sleep Nick turns slightly, a smile on his face as he wraps an arm around his wife, burying his face in her neck. Alan smiles. He thinks his work here is done.

A slow contented whistle escapes his mouth as he pulls the door shut behind him; no longer bothering to be quiet the door slams and vibrations shake throughout the house, waking the disturbed child once more. Now there is nothing to distract him, no more twisted schemes or pathetic pleading women to get in the way. All Alan wants is the screaming to stop, to silence the child, prevent its ignorant little squeals from ever gracing the air again. He hurries purposely into the room; knife held high in his hand ready to strike the babe where it lays - Grace looks up at him just in time to see the deranged man stood above her.  
Alan stops, eyes misting over, mind transported back to a hot and dusty land. Sirens screeching through the air, flames licking their way up the mud clad walls only for them to tumble around him, a voice is blaring out at him from a small box on his chest, civilians trapped, need to be rescued. Duty fills him as he pulls himself out of the blistering sand and runs towards the building; he pulls a woman from the wreckage, she's scuffed and screaming about her child, trapped inside the house, how she can't leave without him, how he has to rescue her baby. Alan swallows back his fear and lifts the woman over his shoulder, her protests and pounding fists on his back as effective as falling feathers, the darkness of the building gives way to blinding light as he settles the crying female on the ground, she's kneeling clawing at his leg, telling him to go get her child. It's against his orders. They've been told to evacuate the civilians now, it doesn't matter who gets left behind, there is an operation they have to run.  
He was never very good at following commands that go against his morals. He ploughs back into the teetering construction, searching on his hands and knees for the source of the babies wails, Alan is constantly aware of the demands to get out of there, of the likeliness the building is about to collapse, how it's a suicide mission he'll be court marshalled for. But he keeps moving and then everything has become engulfed in black. Black and red and heat and smoke and fire, pressure on all sides with no room for movement, all except for one twist of the head in which the man saw a sight that made his heart and eventually his mind break. There, not two feet away from him, lay the child, screaming, and Alan was helpless to stop it. The baby cried for hours, no matter how hard he tried to, he could not convince the babe to quieten down, or push away the rubble to move closer and protect the child. Soon his own eyes became tear ridden, the pain in his chest too much, the heaviness to his eyelids too hard to resist, he is drifting into unconsciousness with the child still crying.

Back in Delaware, Grace stares up, abruptly silencing herself, at the man above her, she can't work out why her mother won't come to help her, why this man is noiselessly choking on his tears, why he's holding the sliver of silver Daddy uses to cut up her mamma's food. So she opens her mouth and lets a warble escape from her tiny lungs. Grace would have easily become a singer, with the sound projection capable of achieving from her small little organs, that is of course if the sound hadn't shocked Alan back to the room. He hates it; he wants it to stop, for it all to stop. Rage and terror are clouding his mind and before he realises what he doing he blindly stabs down at the body below him, blood seeping over the edge of the cot, the wails picking up in intensity, until, the writing lessens and the sounds become inaudible at last. He presses his hands towards the baby's head, whispering how sorry he was, that he never meant to hurt her, but it's all too late. Everything's too late. They're going to get him, he's scared. So he runs.

Nick doesn't wake until late in the morning, he's had a blissful night's sleep and is brought round to consciousness by the soft whir of life outside their bedroom window. Not wanting to end the euphoric sensation, he keeps his eyes closed and moves his hand slowly across his wife's body until he feels it slip on the liquid that has pooled there. Suddenly Nick is more awake then he's ever been in his life; eyes no longer prized shut, but forcibly held open to behold the gruesome image below him; shaking as he pulls back the once cream sheets, whispering out her name in question, he is searching for a response he already knows will never come.

So when Lucifer came, all those nights later, after being so alone, so anger and sadness ridden, he barely hesitated to say yes. He wanted out, he wanted to escape his agony and suffering, needed somebody to hold him and comfort him, help him get the revenge he needed. Even when he saw his own reflection snarling in the mirror, skin peeling away from his face, eyes more vivid than they ever had been before, even when his hands were lifting gallons upon gallons of thick demon blood to his mouth, making him swallow and keep it down when he does, Nick never regrets his decision. Because no matter how bad it seems, Lucifer keeps his promises, he stops the pain from overwhelming Nicks mind, he lets him relive his happiest memories in the back of his head, and most importantly he takes out Nick's fury on the rest of humanity. On every man and woman who stood by and let his family be murdered; his neighbours who never questioned the screams and never came to knock on the door, his doctors who never fully apprised Nick of how strong the drugs hold was and how he would not wake if needed, the police who never caught the killer who never really tried to catch the killer. Anyone who could have contributed to helping the murder go so slickly down. Lucifer punished them all; Lucifer protected him for them all.


End file.
